Below are some of the questions and issues we should individually consider when thinking of undertaking international group travel while COVID is still in our midst. Bear in mind that this column was written in late October 2021, and COVID realities can change quickly.

Personal health awareness

Are you are fully vaccinated? If so, does this include a booster shot?

Have you had a physical recently? How strong is your immune system? How is your stamina quotient? Do you...

Here are some thoughts about how and why one of the most rewarding aspects of my travels is connecting with people — old friends and guides who actually lived through the local history and make it real for me.

On one of my earliest trips to Europe when I was just 14 years old, a family friend in a dusty village on the border of Austria and Hungary introduced me to a sage old man. I remember thinking he was a caricature of a classic old Austrian, with a handlebar moustache, a...

En route to Dachau’s infamous concentration camp, I sit next to an old German woman on the city bus. I smile at her weakly as if to say, “I don’t hold your people’s genocidal atrocities against you.”

She glances at me and sneers down at my camera. Suddenly, surprising me with her crusty but fluent English, she rips into me. “You tourists come here not to learn but to hate,” she seethes.

Pulling the loose skin down from a long-ago strong...